We released our NSW Learner Logbook app Roundtrip last year in August 2017.
Since we released it we’ve had over 160,000 trips added by registered users! 😲
That's a lot of kilometres driven!
Roundtrip is an officially endorsed replacement for the NSW paper logbook - meaning learners never need to carry a paper logbook with them again when they practice.
Learners just have to tap the record button in the app before they start their car. Once that's done they can put the phone away and focus on learning to drive.
Beyond making a logbook app that is super easy to use, part of our mission is to contribute to research on learner driver safety as well (our company has a research background). Our aim is to research anonymised driving behaviour that can be used to inform policy and to help design interventions that promote safer driving.
Here's some interesting insights we found from the first six months of the app's release.
How old are learner drivers?
16.9 years old was the average age of verified learner drivers using our app in the first 6 months. The oldest learner driver was 39 and the youngest was 16.
What's the average practice length?
The average trip duration for all verified learner drivers using the app was 37 minutes.
The shortest practice trip recorded added was just 1 minute long!
How many trips were added?
A total of 47,103 trips were added to the app by verified NSW learner drivers in the first 6 months. 67% of these trips were recorded using our automatic Record Trip feature. The rest were added manually (most likely copied from the paper logbook).
What's the weather like?
Nearly all learners (99.5%) had practiced in fine weather and 63.1% of learners had practiced in rain. The majority of learners had not driven in fog (87%), icy weather (98.1%) or snow (98.8%), probably because this weather is less common in NSW!
Who's supervising learners?
Mums supervised the most practice sessions (47.9%), followed by dads (31.7%). Only 16.8% of verified learner drivers used an accredited driving instructor. Accredited instructors were used on average twice by these learner drivers.
How do learners feel about their practice?
When asked to report how their practice session went generally learners had good (42.4%) or great sessions (35.3%). Only 0.2% of sessions were reported as being awful (don't worry, it does get better!).
What's next for Roundtrip?
Pretty interesting right? We can't wait to see how learners continue using our app in the future.
Our focus from here on in is to keep updating the app, making it better for learner drivers and their supervisors and look at adding new features to better support the learning process.
We've also launched ads for NSW driving instructors and businesses to help us keep the app free for learners.
If you have any questions, feedback or suggestions for future features let us know.
Download our media pack for this research (.zip).
The sample was from 1,457 verified NSW learner drivers. Verified refers to users who registered during the first 6 months, have been successfully recognised as a valid learner driver by RMS through the app, and added at least one trip to their logbook.